As some of you know, we're using Java to develop WSW and Insomnia. No, we're not using Unreal Engine, but thanks for the compliment. ^^ Now, a lot of people are skeptical to our choice of programming language. Java doesn't exactly have a flawless reputation when it comes to performance (and security, although that's only applies to the Java browser plugin, which is not required in any way for Insomnia), but I thought I'd kill the two most common misconceptions about Java here.

a + b is equally fast in Java and C++.

Any basic arithmetic operation is equally fast in Java and C++. The Java Virtual Machine (JVM) compiles those instructions to exactly the same assembly code as C++ is compiled to in the end, although Java requires a few seconds after starting up for all the code to be compiled for optimal performance when the game is first started. There are some special instructions that can be used from C++ that can improve performance in some math intensive areas (for example matrix math). In our case, we actually take advantage of some of these by using math libraries that have native C++ code for the most performance heavy places like skeleton animation, so again, our performance with Java is in the 90+% of C++ here.

Java's garbage collection is not a problem.

Many games written in Java have problem with performance and stuttering due to the Java garbage collector, which automatically frees memory that is no longer in use. An automatic collection pass can suddenly trigger and interfere with the game's smoothness. There are three reasons why this is not a problem.
First, garbage collection only happens if you're actually generating garbage. It's not hard to make a completely garbage free game loop that allocates all its resources once and then reuses them indefinitely, and this is what we're aiming for.
Secondly, the garbage collection passes are fast and run in parallel with the game mostly, so the actual time that the game is paused for a collection is in the range of a few milliseconds, which the CPU easily handles without dropping a single frame in almost all cases. The stuttering we get from garbage collection is 1/10th as frequent and intensive as the stuttering we get from deep within the graphics driver, far out of any game developers control.
Thirdly, that allocating and freeing memory is slower in Java than C++ is a myth in the first place. The fact that the memory management is completely left to the JVM is actually an advantage as it can avoid fragmenting the heap, which is a common problem for C++ programs that degrades performance over time. Another massive advantage of garbage collection is that it's a lot easier to work with for us developers, so we can spend more time on new features and optimizing our algorithms instead of figuring where that memory leak that causes the game to crash and burn after 30 minutes of playing is.

So where is Java actually slower then? The biggest loss of performance in Java compared to C++ comes from the memory layout. In C++ you can use a number of techniques to force memory locality so that memory that is often used together lies in a continuous place in RAM. This makes the program more cache-friendly, as the CPU always loads in memory in relatively large blocks so it'd "accidentally" load in and cache all the required information when the first piece of memory is accessed. In Java, we have no way of forcing this as the placement in memory is left to the JVM, and the JVM may even reorder things later (again, this has other advantages). If you're aware of all this, it's not that difficult to minimize the impact of this. In addition, many Intel CPUs have hardware that pretty much eliminates this difference, which I'll go into detail about in my next post.